Lacrosse heads are typically one piece molded structures made of a plastic material having requisite stiffness and toughness properties. A material in common use is a super-tough nylon material.
In the game of lacrosse, the skills of catching the ball and retaining the ball in the stick are critical. However, to some extent these are competing aims. In order to make catching the ball easier, it is desirable to have the front side of the head that receives the ball as open as possible. This increases the catching area of the head. However, in order to assist in maintaining the ball in the head, it is desirable to have a minimal front area that presents less opportunity for the ball to inadvertently leave the head, commonly caused by checking of the stick by an opponent.
Attempts to balance these two needs have met with limited success. Lacrosse heads generally have an approximate “V” shape, with the sidewalls generally diverging from the rearward throat portion where the head is attached to the shaft, up to the widened scoop portion. When a ball resides in the head, it is carried in the netting at a location which is usually relatively close to the narrower throat portion of the head. Consequently, one attempt at a solution to the problems described above has been to narrow the head (decrease the distance between the sidewalls) in the lower portion of the head in which the ball resides when it is carried by a lacrosse player. This presents less open area from which the ball may leave the head just above where the ball will likely reside when it is being carried. This to some extent does increase retention of the ball. However, at the same time, these pinched sidewall heads present substantially less open area in the lower portion of the head, making catching the ball more difficult. Highly skilled players can manipulate these pinched sidewall heads appropriately so that they catch the ball typically higher in the head closer to the scoop where the head is wider and thus there is more area for the ball to enter the head. Players without finely developed skills, however, find that the ball is much harder to catch with these pinched sidewall heads as there is, in sum, less open area through which the ball can enter the head. And, since the ball must be caught before it is carried, the pinched sidewalls in many cases actually result in less ball control than a standard head.
Another attempted solution to these problems has been to maintain a standard distance between the sidewalls in the lower portion of the head at the top rim of the sidewalls where the ball enters the head, and move the lower portion of the sidewalls in the same area of the head closer together, to narrow the pocket region in which the ball is carried. This results in the inner surface of the sidewalls being angled towards one another from the top rim to the bottom rim. Although this design does maintain a relatively large catch area and a relatively smaller open area in the pocket region of the head, it is believed that the angled interior sidewall portions present more opportunity for the ball to bounce erratically off the sidewall as it is being caught and/or carried. Such heads thus require that the user ideally catch the ball directly in the center of the head or face the open side of the head directly at an incoming ball in order to minimize unwanted ricochet from the sidewalls. Even with this, however, if the ball is close to the sidewall it will likely contact the lower part of the sidewall as it enters the head, causing an unwanted ricochet and thus more difficulty in settling the ball into the pocket. In some cases, this ricochet is sufficient to bounce the ball off the sidewall and out of the head, thus entirely defeating the catching action. These angled sidewall lacrosse heads thus increase the difficulty of the catching action in a manner similar to that described above for the pinched sidewall heads.